Pain Free Performance — Posture Alignment Therapy

Live Pain Free!

Posture Alignment

I’VE GOT A HEADACHE!

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I’ve got a headache! How often do you complain of having one?  Daily? Couple times a week? Once a month?  Some headaches are related to allergies, others are migraines and still others are spouse or child related!

No matter how often they occur or what kind, they can be debilitating.  Some people with migraines have to sequester themselves for days in the dark, taking Advil or Excedrin Migraine.  If it’s a really bad one then we bring out the Imitrex or some version of sumatriptan or other prescription drugs.

What if we did something about the cause of the headache instead of just covering it up with drugs?  We are really just masking the problem and not doing anything about its root cause.  Chances are, the cause of your headache is a misalignment of your head, shoulders and upper back.  If you look at yourself in a side view, most of us are rounded forward in our upper backs and shoulders with the head forward of the middle of your shoulder, or your pelvis is forward of your shoulder which rounds your upper back.  In either case, because you are rounded forward, your lungs are being compressed and your heart is being compressed which means your respiratory system and cardiovascular system are having to work extra hard.  Your body knows it has to get blood and oxygen to your brain to keep you alive but because the position of your head, upper back and shoulders is so compromised, the blood vessels and capillaries cannot work efficiently.  They have to expand to get enough blood to the brain for the oxygen carbon dioxide exchange to take place and those capillaries expanding are what cause the headaches!

If we can get your head, shoulder and upper back in the vertical position by fixing your posture then the lungs, heart, blood vessels and capillaries can all work efficiently and no more headaches! Give us a call and we’ll show you exactly what we’re taking about.  We can get your posture into its most aligned and efficient place – giving you the control to end your headaches once and for all.

Oh, my aching feet!

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Lately, we have had more people come into the office with foot pain.   They say “My feet hurt the minute I get out of bed.”,  “ I’ve got plantar fasciitis.”, or “ I was born with flat feet.”.

You might not know this, but we were all born with flat feet! All babies develop their arches through their infant and toddler years, provided that development is not interrupted.  Today, that development is often interrupted early on. We walk too soon – therefore stop crawling too soon (such an important part of our total body development!) and often times we wear shoes that are too structured – too restricting – too early.  You add all of these possibilities to a more sedentary lifestyle (more technology creating less movement) and our joints deviate which shows up in our feet turning out.  When this happens, the weight during activity is no longer being evenly distributed across the foot and sometimes too much weight is placed on the heel, leading the common complaint of plantar fasciitis.

When standing still, the design of the foot should point straight ahead. With that design, the arches allow the foot to move in every direction and allow us to do whatever we like – walk, run, skip, jump or shuffle sideways.  The design is such that no matter the action, the weight of the body is evenly distributed across the entire foot.  The problem is that our feet no longer point straight ahead naturally.  Most of us think that the natural position of the feet is pointed out by 30-45 degrees.  This is due that interrupted development I mentioned.

The good news is there is a solution. If your joints are misaligned and your feet point out, you can realign them.  Even if your arches have fallen, you can raise them again.  That’s right!  Your flat feet don’t have to be flat.  In infancy and toddlerhood, the actions of crawling and learning to walk compelled our foot muscles to tell our foot bones what they needed to hear in order to develop arches.  Our bones do what our muscles tell them to do (muscles pull bones).  With proper alignment exercises, that process can be duplicated in adulthood.  It requires a realigning of the body over the course of a few months.

That’s where we come in because that’s why we’re here – no matter what the symptom – from your aching feet to your chronic headaches and anything in between. Let’s get started so you can get back to your pain free life!

The Psoas

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The psoas muscle!  Ever hear of it? Most of the people I see in our clinic have never heard of it and yet it is the most important muscle in the body.  Also known as the hip flexor muscle, it joins with the iliacus muscle to form the iliopsoas.

This muscle is the only muscle that attaches/connects the upper, middle and lower body.  For a quick anatomy lesson, it starts at the lumbar vertebrae, goes down on top of and attaches to the inner bowl of the pelvis, then crosses over the top of the thigh bone (femur) and attaches to the inner thigh.

It often does two jobs, one on each side of the body, as it helps stabilize the standing leg while also initiates the swing of the opposite leg while walking.  It is the lead domino and as the lead domino goes, so go the other dominoes.

Many of us have become so sedentary that our hip flexors lose function and shut down.  The hip flexor can and will get too tight, too lose, too weak, too strong or some combination of these traits.  It becomes short and weak as we sit for long periods of time.  Then, when we try to make up for lost time and get in a little movement or exercise –our back flares up, neck starts hurting or we get knee pain.  Maybe we get a case of hip bursitis or plantar fasciitis.  It doesn’t matter what the symptom is or what the diagnosis is, the culprit is our lack of hip flexor function.

So, it’s not your back or knee or foot or neck.  Those are just symptoms. We have to get to the cause to alleviate the symptoms and more often than not the cause is that your iliopsoas has shut down.  Because it attaches to the lumbar vertebrae, the spine and upper body are affected.  It attaches to the pelvis so the hip joint can be affected.  It attaches to the top of the thigh bone so the lower body can be affected.   The psoas is really the most important muscle of the body.  Remember the domino analogy.

The body is an inter-related system so the site of the pain is rarely the source or cause of the pain.  If you are experiencing back pain or neck pain or any other symptom, come let us take a look at you and help you regain your function…and get those hip flexors working!

Hurray! It’s Summertime!

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Living is easy and best of all its vacation time! Most of us drive when we go on vacation, sometimes for hours at a time.  So, by the time we get to that wonderful vacation spot we are in pain and pretty miserable!

That’s because the car is the perfect unilateral instrument; meaning we use only one side of our bodies to operate it.  We use the right foot for the gas and brake pedals and most of us steer with our right hand.  The body, however, is a bilateral system and it needs more stimuli using both sides of the body.  That’s even true for most aspects of our lives – mainly one-sided, the car is just a perfect example.

Take a moment to look down at your feet next time you are standing. Do they point straight ahead?  If not then you are out of balance.  For most of us the feet splay out, one more than the other, which is a clue that the body is not symmetrical or equal one side to the other.

The great thing is even if you are out of balance the body will quickly re-learn how to balance because it is an intelligent system and wants to be balanced.  You can do a few exercises and feel much better!  The exercises below will provide a new stimulus that asks the body to work equally.  You can even do them while you’re at the gas station or at the rest-stop.

STANDING QUAD CONTRACTIONS

Stand with your feet straight ahead

Tighten then relax your thigh muscles (like pushing your knees back, then relax)

Do 3 sets of 15

STANDING ELBOW CURLS

Stand with your feet straight ahead

Place your right hand on your right shoulder; left hand on left shoulder

Touch your elbows together then take them as wide as they’ll go

Do 2 sets of 10

ARM CIRCLES

Stand with your feet straight ahead

Extend your arms out to the side, a little lower than the shoulders

Squeeze your shoulder blades together – lock out your elbows – make a loose fist

Fingers toward the floor, circle the whole arm forward 30 times

Keeping the elbows straight, turn the hands up, fingers toward the sky and circle backward 30 times

COUNTER STRETCH

Place your hands on the roof of your car about a foot apart (SUV owners, use the window sill)

Step back from car about 3-4 feet, get your feet straight ahead then bend from your hips to get your back flat and then put an arch in your low back.

Tighten your thighs and hold that for 30-60 seconds

 

When you have done these 4 exercises, notice how you feel.  You should feel more balanced left to right, a little taller and breathing a little easier!  Do these whenever you can on your trip.  When you get home, look us up and let us help you get straighter, stronger, more balanced and pain free!  Happy trails!

Cart before the Horse

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The Cart before the Horse….

The other day I got a call from a client who was in such excruciating back pain that she couldn’t make her appointment. She travels from quite a distance and she said she could not get comfortable enough to sit in the car that long. I spoke with her on the phone and gave her some e-cises to do. She called back about an hour later and her pain was significantly better.

When I asked her what she’d been doing before her pain began, I got an earful! She had been shaking out rugs, digging in the garden, mowing, cleaning her house for an upcoming event including a lot of up and down the stairs. When we talked about her Egoscue menu, she said she’d been doing well with it. I learned later that she had not done her Eogscue program before she started her busy and very physical day. Aha, therein lies the problem.

She should have done her Egoscue program BEFORE beginning her activities. Let me tell you why….

The sole purpose of performing an Egoscue program is to change the alignment of the body, creating a pain free body. When muscles aren’t working properly, after an injury or surgery for example, they become imbalanced. They either work too hard and become overly tight or don’t work at all and become loose. Muscles are responsible for keeping our bones in place so both scenarios cause the muscles to pull the bones out of alignment. This creates wear and tear on the joints and pain. Doing the individualized Egoscue program you are prescribed gets those muscles back to doing what they’re supposed to do, which puts the bones back where they belong. If my client had done her Egoscue prior to working so hard, her body would have been prepared – less wear and tear on the joints, less pain.

So, the very best way to enjoy your Egoscue and your new found alignment is to DO YOUR EGOSCUE MENU BEFORE YOU BEGIN YOUR ACTIVITIES! It is our goal to get you back to doing what you love and what you need to do! The body needs to be aligned before you start pushing it. It is the best way to avoid pain, avoid injury and begin to strengthen your alignment –not strengthen your dysfunction. Does that make sense?

So, put the horse (Egoscue) before the cart (your life’s activities) and make your Egoscue menu part of your early morning routine! Your body will thank you.  

Egoscue should be your first stop….

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I was working with a client who happens to be a physician and at the end of his session he said something very powerful about his patients – “This should be their first stop, not their last!”.   So often, people come to us in incredible pain after months or years of trying everything else under the sun, finally experiencing relief with Egoscue.  Why?  Instead of focusing on the symptom, we get to the root of the pain.  We diagnose the underlying cause and provide the specific tools to gently move the body back into the intended alignment, alleviating the pain.  This is not a temporary fix, it’s for life.

It’s what we do.  So, don’t make us the last stop in your search for a pain free life, make Pain Free Performance your first stop.

 

GO OUTSIDE AND PLAY!

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Alright!  The snow is melting!  The crocuses are poking through the ground.  The temperature is rising and there are some beautiful sunny days.  IT’S SPRING!  At the risk of sounding like my mother…. GO OUTSIDE AND PLAY!!

Perhaps you’ve been inside at the gym this winter.  Let me encourage you to leave the aerobic machine, get out of the gym and go do the real thing!  I know, you love that machine…you’ve grown very close.  Here’s the thing – it’s not near as good as letting your body take you through the motions, rather than the machine.  For example, the treadmill:  the motorized conveyor belt you’re standing and walking on actually does the work for you.  The muscles of the hip are not moving you, they are being moved.  If you hold onto the hand rail, there is even less work through the hips, the back is in an odd position and there is zero trunk rotation to counter the hip movement.  Normally, the hips and trunk twist slightly in opposite directions when we walk or run with opposite arm and leg movement and this is important for balance.

The elliptical machine has its own challenges.  The momentum of the machine is doing all the work and your hips never really extend appropriately for proper gait.  (Hip extension is the leg going behind you and creates the drive that propels us forward in walking and running!)  I often hear “I prefer the elliptical because it’s not as jarring on my back”.  While it seems as though that’s a good thing, your body is being led along and not in the best position.  You are effectively creating some dysfunction – especially if you have alignment issues.

Then, there’s the stair climber.  Most people on the climber are hunched over, leaning way forward at the waist with all their weight, grasping the rail.  Do people really climb stairs that way?  I don’t think so.   Again you are training yourself in a dysfunctional way that will eventually cause injury and pain.  The best thing is to actually go up and down flights of stairs!  Skip the elevator when you can.  If you use the stair climber – keep your hands off the rails and let your arms swing.  This helps with balance and is a better more efficient workout!

The real answer is to get the body functional: a body that has proper strength, stability, mobility, endurance and flexibility in movement.  When we’re functional, we can easily bend, twist, reach, pull, push, squat, duck, jump, climb over and crawl under.  We need all that variety of movement, it is our birthright and where we come from!  Remember how you played as a child?  When we move like that, we decrease pain, feel better, increase metabolic rate, lose weight, tone muscles and improve our mood – Just in time for spring!

Give us a call and let us evaluate your posture and so you may begin your journey to a functional, pain free and active life.  Your playground is waiting!

 

 

Text Neck

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“TEXT NECK”

My cousin’s 17 year old has been complaining of neck pain, headaches, dizziness, shoulder pain and even some anxiety.  As she walked across the parking lot, the cause was clear, she was looking down at her cell phone, head forward, shoulders and upper back rounded forward.  If you are reading this, you might be hunched over a desk or slumped back in a chair or even reading this on your smart phone in roughly the same position.

Whether you are 17 or 70, that position is causing you pain.  The average head weighs 10 to 12 pounds when it is in its neutral position with the ears over the shoulders and shoulders over the hips.  For every inch your head is forward, that weight doubles!  So, that young man on the bike in the picture above is effectively holding up more than 30 pounds!!  We often do this for hours without even thinking – then, we wonder why our upper back is killing us or we can’t move our neck or our shoulders are tight and painful.

The other thing that’s happening when our shoulders and back are so rounded forward is that our diaphragm cannot possibly work efficiently.  If the diaphragm isn’t working then you are not able to take a regular breath, you are not getting enough oxygen and you can end up with headaches, dizziness and yes, even anxiety.

Several years ago, a doctor gave this syndrome a name – “Text Neck” – to grab the attention of our young people.  The problem has been around ever since we began spending more and more time sitting at computers.  Now with cell/smart phones we don’t come out of that stooped position even when we are standing and walking around.

In the blueprint of the body, the ankles, knees, hips, shoulders and head line up along the vertical line of gravity as we look at the body from either side.  We call that “vertically loaded” where all of the muscles front to back, right to left, and inner and outer are working equally to maintain balance.  In order for the body to do this, we need movement, lots of it and all kinds – as big a variety as possible.  Unfortunately, in our 21st century environment, we are getting less and less movement and in a smaller and smaller box.

That is where we can help!  While I’m sure you won’t be throwing out the cell phone anytime soon, we’ve got something that can counteract the painful results of this associated posture.  The Posture Alignment Specialists at Pain Free Performance will help get you out of that small box of activity, and get you standing tall and vertical!  We will evaluate and prescribe an individualized sequence of exercises that re-activate all of those muscles that have gone off-line while texting your friends or sitting at the computer. So, if you are ready to get out of that hunched over position and get out of pain, call us!